Certain organizations such as franchises pose special problems and opportunities in the procurement of goods and services that differ from other organizations. A franchise, for example an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) as a franchiser may have several franchisee dealerships numbering in the thousands. Each of these dealerships together with the OEM have requirements for the purchase of goods and services common to each other. However, in many instances the OEM and its dealerships do not share their purchasing knowledge, resources or aggregate their purchases of goods and services to take advantage of the more favorable terms that may be available in the marketplace for large orders, such as volume discounts. A dealership will usually rely upon an individual within its organization to perform the purchasing function. This burdens the assigned individual with the time consuming and difficult task of choosing among many suppliers available for the many different goods and services that the dealership purchases and then negotiating price and other terms for the purchase of those goods and services.
At the same time the much larger OEM carries on its own purchasing function. An OEM may have a purchasing department with several individuals dedicated to the purchasing function. This allows the OEM's purchasing department to develop more extensive knowledge and expertise in purchasing the goods and services that the OEM purchases than smaller organizations are typically able to develop. This knowledge and expertise may allow the OEM to obtain favorable terms for the purchase of goods and services. This can be particularly true for the purchase of commodities where the OEM's purchasing department's knowledge, expertise and resources allows it to seek out suppliers that will sell the commodities on the best terms.
There are known electronic purchasing systems, including “Electronic Commerce” purchasing systems. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,970,475 discloses an Electronic Procurement System and Method for Trading Partners. This system is directed to a corporate environment where individual employees are allowed limited access to the purchasing system to procure products or services. A supplier catalog server is accessed by the corporate employees in order to select and enter into transactions. This supplier catalog server is said to interface with the suppliers legacy systems. The primary objective of this patent is to provide different levels of authorization so that different users within the same organization can be limited in their access to different products or services and limited in amounts available for spending. However, this system and other “Electronic Commerce” systems, do not offer the benefits and functionality of a “Market Center” system and method in accordance with the present invention.